The Borgias takes home top honours at Gemini awards

When it premiered in April, The Borgias, a period drama full of sex and scheming, grabbed the attention of 1.3 million viewers.

The series, which stars Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI, apparently also caught the attention of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television; at a star-studded gala Wednesday night, it won the Gemini Award for best dramatic series.

“A lot people, myself included just love learning about those times and love the costumes and the pageantry. It’s almost a fantasy. It takes you out of contemporary life,” said Sheila Hockin who is also a producer of The Tudors which won best drama last year.

To claim the coveted honour, The Borgias beat Flashpoint which dominated with 17 nominations, The Tudors, MTV’s Skins and Endgame.

Another new show, HBO Canada’s Call Me Fitz, shone at this year’s Geminis. The program which is about a morally bankrupt used car salesman, garnered 16 nominations. But despite picking up several awards at an industry gala on Aug. 31, including best director, sound and writing, the top prize of best comedy program or series went to Rick Mercer Report, the most-watched Canadian comedy in the country. Rick Mercer Report is now it its ninth season.

“Things are different every week. One week I jump out of a plane, another week, I fall off a horse. You don’t mess with it. There are no big changes on the horizon,” Mercer said.

Call Me Fitz was still well represented Wednesday night as Tracy Dawson accepted the best actress award for her role as the nutty sister in the dysfunctional family.

“I started off as a writer on this show,” she said. “One of the writers on the show said Tracy should play this role. I thought it would never happen.”

Her co-star, Jason Priestley, however, lost to Peter Keleghan for playing the uptight father in CBC’s 18 to Life. The trophy for best actor in a comedy was Keleghan’s fifth Gemini win.

“I want to thank our champions and Canada’s greatest TV network, the CBC and Kirstine Stewart except for the fact they cancelled 18 to Life,” Keleghan told the audience. “And thanks to the greatest country in the world except for the fact that Jack Layton will never be prime minister.”

Meanwhile, in the dramatic category, Callum Keith Rennie’s turn as a Vancouver homicide detective who suffers from dissociative identity disorder in Shattered, earned him a Gemini. “We were trying to find a base character for the main guy,” he explained. “Each of the alters had a different intelligence, language skills, rhythm and we tried to find [them] a different walk, pace, movement.”

His multiple personalities defeated Enrico Colantoni’s tactical officer in Flashpoint and Hugh Dillon’s homicide cop in Durham County; both actors have been recognized with several nominations and each won a statue in 2009.

For playing an alcoholic mother living in the fictional Blackstone First Nation, Michelle Thrush was awarded best performance by an actress in a leading dramatic role in APTN’s Blackstone.

“I’m not an alcoholic but I’ve watched it from a distance and it was an incredibly dark journey that I went on last year to get that story told,” she told reporters after her win.

She dedicated her award to the late Canadian actor Gordon Tootoosis who died in July. Tootoosis’s daughter made her crimson dress for the evening.

“About 23 years ago when I began acting, there weren’t a lot of brown faces on television and Gordon was one of a handful. He urged me as a teenager to get into acting,” she said. “We were 10 days away from going to camera [on Blackstone] and he passed away suddenly.”

The 26th annual television awards was broadcast live from the CBC in Toronto.

“The CBC turned 75,” host Russell Peters said, “which incidentally is also the age of their youngest viewer.”

Peters recognized a number of nominees in his often biting opening monologue.

“With 10 nominations, Living in your Car, also known as the Canadian actor’s story — I’m kidding we know Canadian actors can’t afford a car,” he said. “It’s about a down-and-out exec who lives in his Rolls-Royce. Really white people? That’s what you call suffering?”

Singers Kellylee Evans and Debra Cox opened the show with dancers from So You Think You Can Dance, and later Jim Cuddy took the stage.

Prior to the gala, 113 awards were announced at two industry galas last week.

The number of entries increased by 20 per cent from last year (2,033 entries representing 456 shows).